Happiness for Humans

Daniel C. Russell

Explores ancient accounts of happiness to open up new directions in contemporary thought

Engages with a question central to our lives: how to live a good life?

Bold, innovative, and challenging--makes a significant contribution to the debate

Happiness for Humans

Daniel C. Russell

Description

In Happiness for Humans, Daniel C. Russell takes a fresh look at happiness from a practical perspective: the perspective of someone trying to solve the wonderful problem of how to give himself a good life. From this perspective, 'happiness' is the name of a solution to that problem for practical deliberation. Russell's approach to happiness falls within a tradition that reaches back to ancient Greek and Roman philosophers--a tradition now called 'eudaimonism.' Beginning with Aristotle's seminal discussion of the role of happiness in practical reasoning, Russell asks what sort of good happiness would have to be in order to play the role in our practical economies that it actually does play. Looking at happiness from this perspective, Russell argues that happiness is a life of activity, with three main features: it is acting for the sake of ends we can live for, and living for them wisely; it is fulfilling for us, both as humans and as unique individuals; and it is inextricable from our connections with the particular persons, pursuits, and places that make us who we are. By returning to this ancient perspective on happiness, Russell finds new directions for contemporary thought about the good lives we want for ourselves.

Happiness for Humans

Daniel C. Russell

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and translations of texts usedIntroductionPart 1. Happiness, then and now 1. Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning2. Happiness as eudaimonia3. Happiness and virtuous activity4. New directions from old debatesPart 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate 5. Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis6. Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis7. Epictetus and the Stoic self8. The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesisPart 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self 9. The embodied conception of the self10. The embodied conception and psychological well-being11. The Stoics' case against the embodied conceptionWorks citedIndex locorumGeneral index

Happiness for Humans

Daniel C. Russell

Author Information

Daniel C. Russell, University of Arizona

Daniel C. Russell is Professor of Philosophy at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, University of Arizona. He is the author of Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life (Oxford, 2005), Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford, 2009), and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge, forthcoming).

Happiness for Humans

Daniel C. Russell

Reviews and Awards

"At a time when academic philosophy can often seem little more than an intellectual obstacle race for the fast-talking, pushy, and glib, we need books like Russell's to remind us what is really at stake." -- Ethics